


An Owen Alphabet

by arbitraryink



Category: Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: F/M, Forum: Goldenlake, SMACKDOWN 2010, Team Owen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-23
Updated: 2010-02-23
Packaged: 2017-11-21 01:06:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/591700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arbitraryink/pseuds/arbitraryink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>V is for valour and Kel thinks that it is fitting. Written for Team Owen at <a href="http://fiefgoldenlake.proboards.com">Goldenlake</a>'s SMACKDOWN 2010.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Owen Alphabet

**Author's Note:**

> I originally posted this as 26 individual entries to Round 1 of SMACKDOWN (and I regret it! Because if I hadn't, Team Owen wouldn't have gone through to crush Team Raoul in the final! It still hurts to remember!) but compiled them all into one fic here.

A is for Alanna, because she is Kel's idol in every way, shape, and form. Since she was a young girl, Kel had dreamed about becoming the next Lioness, riding through Tortall as a knight of the realm, slaying the most foul of foul creatures and capturing the most evil of evil people. Even after listening to the stories told her by her brothers Anders and Inness, after learning that a knight's job was less glory and more mud than she'd ever seen in her life, Kel was determined to succeed. If Alanna could fight with mud in her hair, then so could Kel. 

When she first speaks to Alanna, her heart drops through the floor because this is the person Kel has struggled to be all her life, and for the first time Kel realises that Alanna is no immortal creature; she is simply a woman, and that means that Kel's goals really are within her reach. Owen understands this, because he has dreams too, and this is what makes them into the friends that they are now.

B is for the bruise balm Kel has  left over from her page years. When Owen comes to her after a skirmish with  hill bandits, wincing and rubbing his arm, she takes it from her bag and  unwraps it very carefully.  


"What is it?" Owen asks as she gestures for him to sit, and she tells him to wait and see as she pushes up his sleeve and gently rubs the lotion onto his sore muscle. She can see in his face when it starts to feel better – she can see it in the way the tension goes out of his shoulders and when he lets out a breath he probably didn't know he was holding. It is a precious commodity out here without a Healer, but Owen too is precious and so he deserves it.

C is for Corus and their first appearance at court. There are whispers among the other nobles when they first  catch sight of Kel; her face burns but she keeps her features smooth in the  manner she learned as a child in the Islands. It isn't just the conservatives who  pass her name from lip to lip, but her attention is drawn away from the quiet  gossip when a familiar face appears before her.  


Owen offers his arm with a polite "Lady Knight?" and a short little bow, and Kel sends him a grateful looking before accepting his arm and allowing him to lead her forward. This is a friend who supports her despite crude comments, and Kel appreciates this the most.

D is for the dogs raised in the kennels at Jesslaw. As a gift to his former squire on the day of his knighting, Lord Wyldon had selected two of his best breeding mastiffs, chosen for their temperament, their colouring, and of course their bloodlines. Owen had been as pleased as could be, swearing up and down to raise these dogs to the standards of Cavall. 

When he asks Kel if she has any advice, she is forced to admit that she knows nothing of dogs; but later, when one of the mastiffs rests his head in her lap and gazes at her with big, sad eyes, she thinks that she may have to start learning.

E is for the epiphany that Kel  experiences on the day first day Owen asks her to tilt against him. She is wary  at first because sometimes she underestimates her own strength, but when Owen  tells her that now she is underestimating _him,_ she finally relents.   


They gallop down the field, lances levelled at each other, and Kel hears the crash of her lance breaking on his shield before she feels nothing but air beneath her. The sensation of falling is something she hasn't experienced in a very long time, so she just lays there on the ground, staring at the sky as she comes to grips with the fact that she is not unseatable.   
  
"You went easy on me,"  Owen accuses, and Kel has no doubt that it will not happen again.

F is for friends and the way Kel promises to always be there for Owen, though she knows that once he's married it will be harder to be so close. There will be rumours if they're alone together and there will be accusations if he tries to take the blame, and while Kel genuinely _likes_ Margarry she's afraid that Margarry  
won't understand their bond. 

When she expresses these fears to Owen she is rewarded with a laugh and a shake of the head and an assurance that no, they're going to be friends no matter what happens, and if he has to tell Margarry that, then he will just tell her and be done with it. It's this big heart of his that Kel admires in him.

G is for the generosity that Owen has by the cartload. No matter what is asked of him, Owen will make time to do it, and he will devote all his spare time to others if they ask him to. Kel knows that she wouldn't be so generous were their positions reversed, and so she tries not to be demanding of his time unless it is absolutely necessary. 

Though she doesn't ask for his help, somehow Owen is always there when she needs assistance, be it cleaning her tack or mending her quilt or any one of a hundred other things that need doing in the refugee town. He never says no, and she can never fault him.

H is for horses and Owen's intense conversations with his soon-to-be father in law. While Kel sits and listens, they bicker about breeds and bloodlines and stamina and strength. She never interrupts because she only knows these things about her own mounts, and has little knowledge in general, but they sometimes ask for her opinion anyway and so she has to fake it. By this time, she's become good at faking.

Seeing Wyldon conversing casually with Owen gives Kel a little pang in her heart, because she loves them both in very different ways and respects them both for the relationship they've formed.

I is for imagination, dreams of the future that Kel indulges in only now and then. She visualises a refugee camp that is enforced by soldiers made of its own people, the means to a town that can fend for itself. She can see an end to a war that seems like it will go on forever, and she can picture a life of service to the crown that will not end invariably in bloodshed. 

Sometimes she dreams of a whirlwind romance, and while she doesn't allow herself to envision a face, the man of her imagination always has curly brown hair and a dimple in his cheek.

J is for jousting in tournaments, something that Kel does with continuing frequency while Owen watches from the sidelines. He has never missed a single round and when Kel asks why, he tells her it's because he's her luck.   
  
"Luck isn't tangible," she retorts, but when she rides down the field she can hear his words in her mind, and so she keeps them near her heart and she wins more than she loses.

One day Owen isn't there, but Neal is and he offers Kel a handkerchief that quite certainly does not belong to him. "Our good friend asked me to give you this token," he says drily. "He asks that you wear it next to your heart and think of him when you joust this tournament. Though she blushes, Kel takes it, and she unseats her opponent.

K is for kerchief, and Kel wears them when she sneaks into the city for clandestine meetings with her lover. They choose Corus to meet in because there are so many people that it isn't hard to go anonymous, but getting out of the palace is the part that requires some effort on her behalf. Kel remembers her days as a squire, when she and the boy who was so desperately trying to court her had gone to spend the day before his Ordeal in quiet eating rooms and stealing kisses in sheltered alleys.

She is older now so she is less fearful of detection, but she still wears dresses and coats and kerchiefs on her head, though now she meets a certain brunette rascal instead of a red-haired giant.

L is for the lanterns lighting the paths in the gardens, where Kel walks alone as a party commences inside. She is surprised when someone steps into her path, taking her by the arms and pulling her into a small alcove, nothing over their heads but the stars in the night sky. The feel of those hands on her elbows and the shape of his body are familiar to Kel so she goes along quietly, melting into his arms the moment he whispers "You are most beautiful in the moonlight."

Even as she strains to meet his kiss, Kel whispers, "You should not be here with me the night before your wedding."

M is for is for marriage and all things that word encompasses. It is a binding of life and that is what scares Kel the most. She hates the idea of two lives becoming one, the becoming of a team, and it's partly because she wants to have these things too, but the people she wants to be with have already found their someone-else.

With marriage comes a sense of duty and commitment, and while Owen is the type of person who could apply himself wholly to every aspect of the married life, Kel is not so generous. She doesn't want to give him up. 

N is for Neal, for the look he gives her when she is confronted and confesses to him. "It started with a suspicion," he tells Kel, "because you were always quiet and happy and so was Owen." He adds, "It really wasn't obvious – but it wasn't hard for someone as clever as I am to put two and two together." For a while they are quiet; Neal is nothing but quiet support and Kel is still trying to compose herself when Neal asks her, "But what about his wife?"

Kel doesn't have an answer for this, and she doesn't want to find one.

O is for omniscience, which is a trait Neal shares with Kel's former knight-master. When Raoul walks in on one of their rendezvous, he says nothing aloud but simply raises an eyebrow, allowing Owen a moment to straighten his clothes and flee the library where they'd been found. Kel is silent, slumping in her chair with her head in her hand. She doesn't know what to say to her friend and mentor, doesn't know how to go about explaining what he saw.

"I've known all along, actually," Raoul says conversationally, running a finger along a bookshelf and pulling out a dusty volume. "I thought you might be embarrassed, so I kept it to myself."

P is for the prince and his ascension to Tortall's throne. There has been no grand death that forces him to assume role of king so quickly, but his father has abdicated and there was no other choice. When Jonathan sets his mind to something, it gets done whether the people – or his son – like it or not. But Roald is ready, and though she and their other friends have spent plenty of time assuring him of this fact, Kel has a few of her own private doubts until she is pulled aside at the end of a long night.

"Do you think I have the ability to lead these people as a monarch in a time of need?" Roald asks her quietly, and she thinks for a moment on how she and Owen are nothing but single, small stones in the riverbed that represents their existence.

"You are not one of us, Roald. You were born a king."

Q is for his new queen, the Queen Shinkokami of the Yamani Islands. Though she too is born to this life, raised as a child to royalty and power, she is still a just young girl from a distant land, unprepared to act as co-ruler over all these unfamiliar people. In this, Kel thinks, she is similar to the Tortallan princess married into Carthak sovereignty, but she differs in that Shinko has support here. She is left with her friends and ladies Haname and Yukimi, and she has Kel who is Roald's friend too.

One night when she asks Owen what he thinks of the new queen, he just gives a little laugh and twirls a strand of Kel's hair around his finger. "I think she's the most exotic woman I've seen," he answers honestly, and it makes Kel think. She has always liked her plain features, knowing that this way, she fits in a little better, but perhaps it wouldn't be so bad to do a little experimentation.

R is for Rajmuat, a city that Kel has only read about in books and yet a place that she longs to see more than any other. Since becoming a page she has learned that the world is larger than ever she thought it was; that the little of Tortall she'd seen was nothing when compared to the rest of the vast continent with all its other countries and mountains. She knew that her experience living in the Islands was one that few people are given, and so she doesn't take it for granted, but she does want to see all that she can.

Owen is the only one who knows of her Copper Isles fantasies. He has never been out of Tortall either and one of Kel's favourite things about him is that they share the same dreams.

S is for stars and summer and the cool air of the late evening. This is the part of day that Kel loves the most, because in the summer there are fireflies and crickets and clear skies to gaze at stars. There are stories she has heard about constellations coming to life and dwelling on earth to help their human companions and she likes to imagine that they have come to her as well, in the forms of Peachblossom and Jump and her precious flock of sparrows.

With a wistful sigh she leans back against Owen's legs, and he reaches forward to pull her closer. "A copper for your thoughts," he offers, and when she shakes her head, he says, "Well I'll tell you mine for free. You remember those stories about the constellations coming to earth? I always kind of thought that that's why  
your animals are so special." It is in this kind of moment in this part of the day that Kel loves him even more.

T is for trees and her fear of climbing. When she was a child she first developed her fear of heights when her brother held her out a balcony window, but after years of forcing herself to face that feeling of panic and helplessness, Kel has rid herself of a habit she doesn't want. Every day she pushes herself to be a little better, just in case of a relapse and the setting in of a new, fresh terror. During the day she walks the walls and ramparts; she maps the fields below Mindelan and her post at the border. In the evenings she climbs a tree and sits until it is nearly too dark to find footholds on her way down. She continues this challenge to her own psyche and won't ever end until she knows what she has gained.  

On the day of her twenty-fifth birthday, Owen gifts her with a sapling. He tells her that it is a flowering pear tree, and that it is the sturdiest of all pear trees in the realm. He gives it to her so that she may plant it somewhere special, where she can watch it grow and remember the adversity she faces every day. "If you can climb  
a tree," Owen tells her, "then you can stop being afraid of anything."

U is for the umbels on the carrots and parsley in the tiny garden patch Kel planted behind the camp at her border post. Leaving the residents of New Hope on their own had been one of the hardest decisions she'd ever made, and while she knew that it was something they had to do for themselves – just to prove to each other that they could survive by themselves – she still wanted to take as much away from her experiences with them as possible.

She wouldn't have thought of the garden if it hadn't been suggested to her, but when Owen said, "What better way than to enjoy the reward of memory?" she knew that it was the right thing to do.

V is for valour and Kel thinks that it is fitting. Her Owen was so full of life as a young page – this she remembers well – and even when through maturation he became more subdued, he still radiated that same sense of spirit. It would not have made sense for him to die of illness or old age. He was a scrapper, a fighter to the very end, and Kel could not have wished for him a better fate had she wanted to.

He went down when a powerful sword punched through the chainmail and into his belly, but even on his knees Owen kept fighting. Kel could see him from where she fought with glaive in hand, his one hand clutching his stomach as though he were trying to hold it together, the other dragging his last dagger from his boot and – she watched him die in the first snow of the year with a triumphant laugh on his lips.

Remembering this, Kel weeps, but she weeps less for the loss of a lover and more for the loss of the boy in his heart.

W is for winter but also for wishes, the kind that are made upon stars and pennies and loose eyelashes on cheeks. She doesn't wish that Owen was still alive, because she knows that those kinds of dreams are nothing but foolish hopes. Instead she wishes for bigger things; she wishes that Owen's father will remember him with pride, and that the realm will remember him with respect.

In her nightmares for a week she sees the battle over and over, and it is worse every time. To keep from screaming she instead memorises every minute detail, and every time she dreams she wonders how two knights and two soldiers survived an attack of twelve well-armed hill bandits. She loves Owen most in the week after his death because he died the same way as his mother, but there was no loss of dignity because he took the enemy down with him. 

X is the xystus that she walks every day, a pillar of a tree every two feet, evenly spaced to support the great canopy over the path. Kel wonders where they find these ideas – if they're part of some mystical days of yore, ancient history rebuilt within the forests of the kingdom. She loves Tortall and everything in it, but every day she finds something new and must make more room in her heart, so this is why she doesn't allow herself to mourn so greatly for the loss of her friend.

Every day she walks the xystus alone, so it is a surprise one day to find Owen's widow on an elaborate stone bench, her embroidery beside her. Kel takes a deep breath, but she knew this moment had to come. She asks Margarry if she may sit down. 

Y is for yes, the answer Kel gives when Margarry asks the question she's so long been afraid to hear. She truly does like Margarry, but they will never be friends because first she had him and then he was Margarry's, and now he belongs to neither of them and no one can be happy. Wyldon's daughter is still the lady of Jesslaw, even without a husband of the blood to raise the heir in her belly, but Owen had been thinking ahead and left instruction upon his death for a steward to manage the fiefdom until his son had his shield. The unborn babe would be the only child of an only child, and Kel can sympathise even if she can't know.

"You loved him very, very much," Margarry says to Kel, and Kel watches her warily as she waits for what comes next. "Did he love you the same?" 

Z is for the zaffre Kel uses to colour the glass on the ornament she has painstakingly made for the baby's room in Margarry's fief. She doesn't know how, but somewhere along the way, she has come to love Margarry with the same passion she loved Owen. It may be a different kind of love – above all, she feels fiercely protective of the child in Margarry's belly, only days from away birth and yet years away from loneliness – but it is still love just the same.

 Kel's hands aren't delicate and so the dark blue pigment smudges here and there, and she thinks her fingers may be permanently stained, but she loves her nieces and nephews and believes that she will love any child of Owen's with everything that her heart can offer.


End file.
